E-commerce and online accessible storefronts allow for a quick and convenient way for businesses to create, gather, store and disseminate information about the users and customers that visit e-commerce merchants, websites, applications and services. Many users and customers visit websites operated by e-commerce merchants and vendors to view or purchase products or services. The information about each user's experience through the website, application or service is often collected, organized and stored into manageable data structures, such as a customer or user profile. The stored information can be accessed or recalled at a subsequent time by the customer or the business operating the e-commerce storefront. Organization and management of a user's browsing, viewing and purchasing habits provide a great deal of information about each particular user's interests, needs and past activities in order to predict future user behavior.
In recent years, there has been an increasing trend of using electronic shopping basket applications and/or wish list applications to provide a user of a website, application or service with a mechanism that temporarily stores selected items (e.g., goods, services, and/or offers) prior to purchasing these items electronically. Typically, these applications, services and websites reside on a Web server of the merchant or shopping web page and are limited to use only on that particular web page. A user can visit the merchant's web page and/or shopping portal and temporarily store items of interest in an electronic itemized list. The electronic item list can then be reviewed or e-mailed to a third party, such as a friend or family member, so that the third party may purchase these items for the user as a gift. The electronic item list can also be a temporary storage for the user, until the user decides to make a purchase of that item at a later time.